Life and Times at the Head of the Chesapeake Bay

So, maybe you heard, Apple lost? I wasn’t the least bit surprised given the case was so obviously apparent that it makes Michael Bay movies seem like masterpieces of unpredictability. Hell, even their most vocal supporters would often near or outright concede they colluded, justified, of course, because Amazon, conspiracy, evil, apocalypse, Bezos is a vampire, whatever. I stopped listening once it became apparent these folks wanted the mutually exclusive ends of some fondly mused about artistic utopia of literacy and culture, and wanted it achieved under the colors of the profit-seeking billion-dollar publisher conglomerate gatekeepers. Say what you want about Amazon, but if I’m truly not interested in the commercilized publishing industry, their system and the digital and print on demand publishing environment that’s grown with it, will allow me to carve out a place where I can do whatever I like to my artistic heart’s content and still reach the marketplace. The old publisher system would brook no such quarter. Arguing for artistic merit in literature and backing those who’ve largely been an impediment to it is a logical inconsistency I can’t get past.

From the time the Dept. of Justice first announced the investigation, then the charges, followed by the publisher settlements, the trial and now the decision, I read more than a few opinions in defense of the Agency Pricing scheme at the root of the matter. They all basically boiled down to the same thing: the DOJ doesn’t get how the industry works, books are not widgets and Amazon is a monster that, if we do nothing, will burn the Earth to ashes. The Amazon monopoly concern is founded in some truth. I share it myself, to an extent, mostly of the point when Bezos moves on. The next regime that takes over is my concern.

The difference between their opinions and mine is that I recognize how Amazon achieved their position in the market. They did it by breaking the monopoly publishers had established over several decades. The testimony in the Apple case painted a picture of publishing CEOs not at all unfamiliar with routinely meeting with their fellow executives and exchanging notes on competitive circumstances. The control they had may not have been a traditional monopoly, but it sure as hell looks an awful lot like a cartel. And that says nothing of the virtual monopsony they collectively held, due to their gatekeeper role, over their suppliers (writers). Amazon broke their hold by addressing those most disaffected by the cartel’s established structure, using technology to do it. The same disruptive conditions they used still exist and I am confident can and will be directed at Amazon in the event they change course into genuinely predatory waters. But please don’t ask me to back the old, more restrictive cartel as the better choice.

Often, there’s a “won’t somebody please think about the bookstores!” moment tossed in there, too, to pull on the heartstrings of nostalgia. But, again, there’s that same dichotomy of logic in what they claim to want and what they’re actually advocating for. The health of independent book stores is clearly a concern for many, but when you present the Borders and Barnes & Nobles of the world as victims in the same mold, you’ve lost the path to rationality. Barnes & Noble in its prime was a profit consuming monster that left a wake of boarded up independent stores behind its publisher-enabled bulk-level discounting. What’s good for B&N and what’s good for independent stores are completely divergent. B&N is no ally of the corner book shop.

This argument openly backs extraordinary leeway and support for entities with an established history of actually doing what they fear Amazon might do in the future. The intellectually honest argument would be to advocate for a third path that keeps the publishers’ cartel broken and restrains Amazon’s ability to have an out-sized influence on the market. The relative absence of that third path in the anti-Amazon rhetoric makes me wonder if it’s these people, so vigorously defending both the greatness of a diverse literary culture and the corporate bohemoths who have perverted that to the greatness of their profits, who are the one’s who don’t understand how the publishing industry really works.

Amazon is a corporate bohemoth, too, of course, one that presents some very real risks for the future. But, right now, they provide a ton of benefits to a ton of people who aren’t those guys, namely readers and writers. You can say an Amazon-led industry will turn out badly for those groups in the long run all you want, but that’s not the case today, or in the forseeable future which, admittedly, might be short.

You don’t like Amazon? Fine. Let’s talk about how we move forward from the progress and advantages Amazon’s made. But if you want to talk me into moving backwards into a situation that restrains me as a writer both creatively and financially, and as a reader, both in choice and higher prices, you can take that worn out nag of an argument elsewhere.

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